Press Button To Blog - The Bat & The Bug

I'm always on the lookout for unique inspiration for my photoshoots. The last thing I want to do is take a picture of a pretty person in front of a pretty background. It's dull, it's uninspired, it's a waste of film that I'm not actually shooting with. There's a billion of pictures just like it, many likely of the same types of people in the same exact places. What's the point, I ask no one rhetorically.

A decade ago I had taken a trip to Asia after college. I had never been outside of the country of Canada other than to New York City. A few of my neighbors were from the Philippines, and they had consistantly recommended it as a place to get away, talking about how much they missed the culture. I was looking for something "exotic", while allowing for some of the more modern conviences that I've grown accustomed to in big city life. So I took a two week vacation all by my lonesome, visiting Cebu City and of course Bangkok, Thailand. It was in the hustle and bustle of the latter's streets that I came across a roadside vender selling knick knacks to tourists. In one wooden glass display box were some preserved animals that caught my eye. Suffice to say Toronto, Canada doesn't have boxes of bats to be purchased on the street corner, and I knew they would make great souvenirs to bring back home. So I got a bat and some insects for myself, and a large scorpion for my "Little Brother".

As I started to look around my apartment for inspiration in the now, I realized that I had accumulated quite a collection of photography props without even realizing it. One of them of course was the affirmentioned display. What was the point of having these bitching objects if I couldn't do anything with it other than stick it on the wall? With me, once I get an idea in my head it's hard to deviate from the path. So to shake things up and get over my photographer's block, I decided I needed to lose the integrity to some of my momentos, which is the police way to say I mildly mutilated them. It was hard at first as I popped open those sealed glass displays, as each one held special memories from my trips, but I knew it was necessary to fulfill the creative vision that had spur of the moment crept into my mind.

My overall inspiration was fake cryptids, a la Barnum & Bailey's circus and their many, many sham mythical creatures they put on display for the public such as their unicorns, mermaids and half-man-half-money hybrids. Ever since I was a kid, sifting through books of mythology at the library about long dead cultures and civiliazations, I've always loved the idea of their fantastical creatures lost to time and wanted to find a way to incorporate them into my photography. Outside of chartering an expedition boat to the Amazon or going hunting for the Loch Ness Monster myself, mashing together my own beast is as close as I'm going to get to naming something after myself. The Squee Humananimalsicus. Really rolls off the tongue. If nothing else, it was a refreshing change of pace at the time to not have to wrangle live animals as well.

A problem that arose was that dehydrated insects that had died at least ten years ago if not longer, aren't the most sturdy objects to roll around in my rough man hands. I'm not what you would call delicate to begin with. It only took a few repositions of the selected beetle I pried off of the display before the poor bug's head started snapping clean off. Not a whole lot of fresh muscle and tissue holding that thing togeater it seemed. It was a tad sad for it to fall apart, as it was still a souvenir from one of my only vacations EVER, but the photos came first. For the cause and all that jazz. In the least, the bat that was also from the display managed to hold it together. For the moment anyway, as I've certainly had some thoughts of what else I could do creatively with a dead bat and I'm going to hazard a guess that his corpse isn't long for this world either. If you're not desecrating a body once in a while, what are you even doing with your free time?

I was thrilled with the results of my photoshoot. Of course there were elements that I'd improve if I could, but for a project that was very much off the cuff, I was more than happy with how the few pictures came out. They were some of the most unique and inspired images I had ever created at the time, even if it was only positioning two bodies of things I didn't kill beside each other. While the deforming of my souvenirs was difficult on a personal level, it opened up a new future world of possibilities for me, because now I have a whole opened display full of similar creatures to play around with that have yet to fall apart. Even when they do, that's just further options for me to explore. So I'm looking forward to seeing what other peculiar combinations I can create out of my other treasured memories. And I'm partially glad my grandfather wasn't taxidermied when he died, because oh boy would those be some awkward photosgraphs.